Video Game / Chivalry: Medieval Warfare

FOR THE GLORY OF AGATHAAAAAAAAAAA!

Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is a medieval warfare game developed by Torn Banner Studios, and is a spiritual successor to the Age of Chivalry game mod for Half-Life 2. The game is set in the fictional kingdom of Agatha, where a civil war has begun between the Mason Order and the Agatha Knights. That's about the extent of it before we get into its competitive multiplayer.

The players have a choice of one of four classes, an Archer, a Man-at-Arms, a Vanguard, or a Knight, with each having a differing amount of equipment available. Archers use either javelins, crossbows, or longbows; Men at Arms use swords, maces, axes, and shields; Vanguards use polearms and greatswords, and Knights use battleaxes, war hammers, and other heavy weapons potentially along with heavier shields.

Melee combat consists of a medium-speed side-to-side slash, a slower and more damaging overhead strike, and the fastest and farthest-reaching stab which is also the weakest. Different attacks can be combined together by performing them quickly before your swing is finished striking. Attacks can be feinted with another button while the swing is being wound-up to throw off enemies. Weapons can be raised for a short amount of time to parry after which they will be lowered - only when you have a shield can you block for an extended amount of time. Players can kick or shield-bash unless they are using a projectile weapon to do a very small amount of damage that breaks blocks and leaves the hit target open for a follow-up. Parrying, feinting, missing attacks, and successfully blocking drains stamina from a bar.

Weapons are differentiated by their damage values, reach, animation times, and type. Blunt weapons are most effective against plate-armored opponents while stabbing attacks are best against chainmail; slashing does the least damage to both but is the most effective against lightly armored targets. Weapon categories are split into examples of a fastest one, a most-damaging one, and an in-between one.

Weapons and blocking have hitboxes in accordance with their models and placement, leaving players able to strike past blocking enemies with some accuracy and their opponents failing to place their weapon or shield correctly in response to incoming attacks. Players can even manipulate their positioning by putting their striking-side closer to their opponent to hit them faster on their swings... or even delay it by turning their striking side away!

An expansion based on Deadliest Warrior has been released. It features six playable classes: the Pirate, the Samurai, the Ninja, the Viking, the Spartan, and the Knight from the base game.

Torn Banner Studios has a Spiritual Successor called Mirage: Arcane Warfare which features similar gameplay mixed with magical abilities in an "Arabian Nights" Days setting. The start of its closed beta is March 27, 2017, with guaranteed access for those who pre-order. A group of Chivalry players went to develop another Spiritual Successor in the form of Mordhau, which tries to fix many perceived issues with the game.

Chivalry 2 was released on June 8, 2021.

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Examples of Tropes in this Video Game

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: It is possible to dismember or behead someone with any bladed weapon, but the tiny shivs are the most hilarious.
• All There in the Manual: Believe it or not, the game actually has a plot - an old and forgotten part of the game's website describes in some detail why the Mason Order and the Agathian Knights are fighting, as well as providing a map of the Agathian continent that describes the various provinces. Not that any of it matters to the in-game experience, of course.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: If you unlock every weapon for a class, you get a new, fancy helmet for it. You also get a silver, dark blue (Agatha) /dark red (Mason), and gold version for reaching rank 30, 40, and 50, respectively, which requires thousands upon thousands of kills and will take you hundreds of hours of playtime.
• A Nazi by Any Other Name: The Mason Order, who are basically this trope mixed in with some Soviet-era revolutionary rhetoric and dressed in medieval armor. And who somehow aren't the Imperials or Rebels.
• Annoying Arrows:
  • Knights using a Tower Shield can face the Archers in question and guard while crouching. Not one arrow will make it through unless the guard is broken by someone/something else.
  • In general, arrows and other ranged weapons do very good damage, but have the same effect any other kind of injury has on mobility, stamina, attack speed, and attack power: absolutely none.
• Art Evolution: The graphics and shading are much better in Medieval Warfare than Age of Chivalry, although Medieval Warfare is made by a different studio. This photo◊ is a nice example.
• Arrow Cam: Can be activated while firing projectiles for the Archer should they want to learn how to lead long shots better from watching its precise trajectory, or just because it's cool to watch.
• Artificial Stupidity: The bots. At any given moment, half of them will be stuck in random pieces of environment, 1/4 will be kicking each other trying to clear paths and 1/4 will charge at the closest enemy they can see. None ever go for the objectives. The bots are also thoroughly incompetent at combat and rarely block.
• Ax-Crazy: In-universe, the Agatha Knights and the Mason Order are a bit anxious to reduce each other to little bits.
  • Special mention goes to the Mason knight, who has by far the most bloodthirsty and psychopathic warcries.
• Battle Cry: There's even two variations of it - one is done while moving, while the other done while standing still plays a special animation that stops you from doing anything else as it goes.
• BFS: Most of the weapons available to the Knight fall under this, as well as a few for the Vanguard.
• The Black Death: One of the game modes has you pushing a wagon full of rotting corpses into a castle's water supply, to poison it. It's implied the corpses are infected with the black plague.
• The Big Guy: The knight moves much slower, but has some of the most damaging weapons currently in-game.
• Blood Knight: Vanguards are probably this in-universe, considering their willingness to charge into enemies. In gameplay, they have a charge attack that is powerful enough to One-Hit Kill with some of the heavy weapons available.
  I tire of mead! I thirst for BLOOOOODDDD!
• Bloody Hilarious: Part of the appeal of the game is the ability to kill enemies in numerous messy ways. The bodies really start piling before long.
• Bow and Sword in Accord: Archers can equip daggers, knives, short swords, and sabers, which can parry and block just as well as greatswords and polearms, allowing for this in the event someone closes the distance. Archers are unarmored and disadvantaged in melee, but a skilled player can still rack up some kills.
• Bulletproof Human Shield: Played straight for thrown/fired weapons, as they will stop dead immediately upon hitting something. Anything handheld, on the other hand, is limited only by the player's movement and allows for piercing through multiple enemies at once.
  • Ballistae fully avert this, their bolts cutting through any and all player characters like knives through hot butter.
• Call That a Formation?: Subverted. Due to the Friend or Foe? issues, standing anywhere within 180 degrees of an allied Knight or Vanguard will usually get you hit with the backswing of whatever oversized weapon they're using. It's still recommended that players try to stick together in most maps and game modes, as a defense against ambushes and swarming.
• Carry a Big Stick: The cudgel and the quarterstaff. Get in your enemy's face and overwhelm him with your dazzlingly speedy strikes.
• Charged Attack:
  • Overhead swings. They all have longer wind-up but also do much more damage.
  • Using catapults, the longer you draw the launching mechanism back, the further the rock goes.
  • The Vanguard's lunge attack requires you to have been sprinting long enough before he'll be ready to do it. Interestingly, you can still do regular overheads and stabs without hindering the charge up.
  • Slings can be charged for greater damage by swinging them overhead longer. Bows will also do more damage and fly straighter if their strings are fully pulled back before firing.
• Cherry Tapping: Everyone has a Lethal Joke Weapon — their bare fists. The attacks are quite fast, but they are short-range, weak, and you can only block other fists. The height of embarrassment is an Archer killing a Knight with his fists.
• Civil War: Between the Masons and the Agathans.
• Cold Sniper/Friendly Sniper: The Archer seems like this, again depending on who plays him. He can either be as hot-blooded and as hilariously insane as the other classes, or he can be a complete mute sitting in the back and murdering everything and everyone from afar.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Agathian Knights are blue, Mason Order is red. Note that this does not guarantee that players won't screw this up and behead an ally running up to them by mistake.
  • This becomes subverted in some instances. Most hilariously, if an Agatha Knight is able to survive multiple engagements, he will probably end up covered in blood and become that much harder to tell apart from one of the Mason Order.
• Combat Pragmatist: Everyone. As seen on the Cherry Tapping entry above, you can say "Screw swords/bows/whatever! A real man fights with his fists and feet!" And sometimes, this will actually work.
  • The game might be called "Chivalry" but don't expect 99% of players to actually follow honorable combat. If you get in a protracted melee duel and no one from either side runs in to try to steal the kill or pelts both of you with arrows/rocks/javelins, either everyone is dead or just really, really dumb.
  • One of the best options available to those fighting on top of a wall, building, or cliff? A Kick or Shield Bash towards the edge. Fall Damage kicks in and starts to scale rather quickly.
  • If one is feeling like being a Blood Knight Berserker (and risking the historically accurate complaints of "OMG, WTF n00b" from their teammate) a Vanguard charging in with a two-hander sword where a teammate is severely outnumbered can be extremely effective. Yes, there is a really good chance you'll take out your fellow knight. There is also a really good chance you'll take out 3 or 4 enemies in the chaos you cause.
• Commie Nazis: The Mason Order, who again combine the Social Darwinism of Nazism and the populist rhetoric and goals of Communism, all wrapped up in medieval armor ala a Valkyria Chronicles game. In case you needed any indication about which side is better.
• Critical Existence Failure: Running low on health causes a bit of red tint and muted color Interface Screw, but otherwise being low on health and stamina doesn't actually matter until either of them run completely out.
• Death or Glory Attack:
  • Defense, anyway. The crouch button can allow a player to duck underneath a horizontal swing and avoid it. If it fails, they'll probably have gotten hit in the head and taken even more damage.
  • You can manipulate your striking side so your swing connects faster, or very delayed. There's always the possibility of outright missing your opponent, or being hit first.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts:
  • Men-At-Arms tend to have the weakest weapons, but move the fastest of all the classes. This also happens a lot against Knights, considering they have a lot of armor.
  • Shortbows and Slings lack killing power compared to other Archer weapons, but fire quickly and have a lot of ammo, meaning your strategy when using them is basically to inflict the ranged version of this.
• Difficult, but Awesome: Men-at-Arms need to rely heavily on dodging and timing attacks. Screwing up can get one skewered or decapitated in short order, doing it well can result in a high kill count from moving from opponent to opponent and eliminating them without taking damage.
  • The Double Axe also counts when it comes to weapons. It has a slow winding speed and short range; unskilled users of this weapon die quickly, thanks to its laughable speed and easily-countered swings. However, if you hang in there the rewards are amazing. It has one of the highest damage stats in the entire game, and one overhead swing can instantly kill an Archer or Man-at-Arms. Using this weapon requires exact precision and good timing, but a skilled axe fighter leaves a large death toll.
    • The Maul is even moreso, as it has an even slower wind-up than the Double Axe, but it can kill any class in the entire game, even Knights with a single overhead swing. To see the Maul in action, check out Spook, he is widely considered the best Maul user in the world.
• Dirty Communists: The Mason Order certainly gives off this vibe, with its populist goals, violent means, and association with the color red.
• Dirty Coward: Running away from battles to heal may sound like a good idea, but it's actually punished with the "Chase" mechanic- sprinting towards enemies that are running away makes you go faster.
• Epic Flail: Knights have two options for flails: the regular flail, and the heavy flail. Both are powerful as all get out, being Knight weapons, but the heavy flail is bigger, packs a greater punch, and has a slightly longer reach. At the moment, they're both a little underpowered, sadly.
• Escort Mission: Some Team Objective maps have one side protecting a king. While the team's top player is chosen to be the king, this can either be very easy or mind-numbingly difficult depending on that player's skill and map knowledge. Fortunately, the king has a massive amount of health in order to make up for potential player ineptitude.
• Everything Fades: Somewhat unfortunate, considering it removes a bit of the glorious Gorn in the game. Corpses and fallen gear will only persist up to a max you set in the configuration. In large games, there will be a lot of fading.
• Evil Laugh: Mason characters do this quite a bit. They generally have a lower-pitched version of the Agathan laughs.
  • Actually has its own hotkey. Anyone who's giggling in the middle of a corpse-strewn field is probably pretty evil.
• Evil Sounds Deep: The Mason Order are clearly not very nice guys from the tutorial, and their troops' voice generally have a lower pitch to them compared to the Agatha Knights. The Mason Knight and Vanguard have especially deep voices, and the Vanguard's voice has a reverb due to his helmet.
• Excuse Plot: The Masons are pissed at the Agathans, for... reasons! Who cares; let's chop off some heads!
• Faceless Goons: The Vanguard and Knight classes both wear face-obscuring helmets, and are typically the bulk of either team.
• Fantasy Character Classes: The Knight is a Knight, the Vanguard is a Barbarian, the Man-At-Arms is a Swashbuckler, and the Archer is a Sniper Ranger.
  • There's also the new option to use your fists instead of actual weapons, making any class potentially a Monk.
• Foe-Tossing Charge: Whenever a Vanguard's charge lands and kills, it usually ragdolls corpses and they slump to the ground, or it sends the body flying back a bit. Even on a block, opponents are staggered and knocked back.
• Fragile Speedster: Men-at-Arms are very fast, can dodge, and have access to quick weapons, and a shield by default. Borders on Game-Breaker if played very well. However, they have next to no armor, just a little more than the Archer, and are usually killed in one or two strikes from the heavier weapons.
• Friendly Fireproof: Averted Trope. Using your horizontal swings in a large melee is probably going to hit your allies. And not even your enemies in compensation necessarily, because they're more likely to see you clearly enough to block it. Two-handed weapons' large range further exacerbates friendly fire potential with swings.
  • On the bright side, this allows for hilarious tradition of everyone teamkilling each other after the round's over and waiting for the next one to load.
• Friend or Foe?: The Game. It's a complete and utter miracle if there isn't at least one teamkill per match. The only thing preventing it — and the term "preventing" is used very loosely here — is that damage to allies is halved; stunning a teammate mid-attack or just plain killing them out of accident is very common. Knights and Vanguards are the biggest offenders due to their sheer attack power and wide swing range, and siege weapons don't discriminate between teammates either; if it's within their AOE, it dies. The tendency of players on the same team to stab each other in the face while fighting an enemy is parodied by the voice actors:
  Agathan Man-At-Arms: Erm... ehhh... the blue looked red!
• Good Old Fisticuffs: Fists are a surprisingly dangerous weapon, especially on the Man-At-Arms. Careful use of dodging, ducking, and jumping to avoid attacks will allow a fist-fighting Man-At-Arms to defeat any enemy in close range through spammed jabs and uppercuts
• Gorn: Oh so much. As a list, you can have your limbs chopped off, your head exploded by maces and hammers, your body reduced to cinders by flaming oil, or just reduced to a pile of limbs by an axe.
• Glass Cannon: Archers can instantly kill others by obtaining a headshot. However, they only carry daggers and shortswords in close range, making them very easy to kill assuming you can get close enough. Even in melee, they are not to be underestimated — their weapons strike fast.
• Gray-and-Grey Morality: On the one hand, there are the Mason Order, with their noticeably more guttural war cries and foreboding black and red colour scheme, who do things such as murder innocent relatives of the Queen, and slaughter and pillage villages. On the other, there are the Agathan knights, who do almost the same thing. Although they do look a bit friendlier in their white and blue uniforms.
  • Taking the factions by their actual credos, it is either this or Black-and-Gray Morality. The Mason Order are like the bastard child of the populist Peasant Wars and 20th-century totalitarianism, who behave with *gratuitous* stupidity in the tutorial, even if you're on their side. However, they are apparently very popular amongst the lower orders and advocate removing or at least weakening the entrenched feudal order in favor of meritocracy (even if only in the sense of "Rule of the Strongest"). In contrast, the Agathans are chivalric and legitimately tend to believe in legitimacy, honor, and noblesse oblige, but they are still feudal overlords who tend to indulge in horrendous classicism towards the "Filthy Peasants."
• Have a Nice Death: There are many amusing ways to die in this game, from decapitations, to getting your head pulverized, to even getting fisted to death.
• Helmets Are Hardly Heroic: Vanguards have permanent helmets; the character customization update lets you spawn without a helmet or with your visor up for the other classes. They can be knocked off by ranged weapons to the head, but don't actually have any gameplay purpose.
• Hollywood Tactics: Despite being a medieval combat simulator, it still is an online game, so many times it's rare to see co-operation, let alone legitimate formations and tactics. If a team feels like taking the effort though,
• Javelin Thrower: Javelins are one of the Archer weapons, and can be used for both melee and throwing.
• Jack of All Stats:
  • Vanguards have medium durability and speed, and the widest variety of weapons to choose from.
  • Javelin Archers are the only class that can fight in melee or at range without switching weapons, as well as combine a Buckler with either a Javelin's decent melee reach, or the surprisingly lethal speed of a dagger/short sword.
• Joke Item: You can put away your weapon and you put up your fists. Interestingly, they do one more damage against knights with an overhead attack than a dagger would stabbing them.
• Knight in Shining Armor: There certainly are knights in the game, and they have some pretty shiny armour. Whether they act with Chivalry is up to whoever plays them.
• Kill It with Fire: You can grab torches and throw them to light enemies, buildings and pyres on fire. The latter two can be mission objectives.
  • Molotov Cocktail: The Men-At-Arms have fire pots available to them; anyone that stays in the resulting circle of flame will quickly be reduced to a charred corpse. It's a good way to deal with shield-happy Knights that don't want to move out of your way.
• Large Ham: Everyone, all the time. Every taunt is gloriously overacted, and even the objectives are screamed out in a manner that would make a Commissar proud. Most telling is the fact that there is a key bound to making your character issue an enraged scream that lasts about fifteen seconds.
  Vanguard, charging: AGATHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
  • Special mention, however, has to go to the Mason Knight, whose hamminess easily rivals that of a Chaos Space Marine:
  I tire of mead! I thirst... FOR BLOOOOOOOD!!!
  • Demonstrated by UberhaxorNova and Kootra at about the 5:00 minute mark.
  • A voice yelling out the objective for Team Objective matches at the respawn area has become somewhat popular amongst the fanbase. Naturally, the voice speaks very loudly for everyone in the respawn area to hear him.
• Lethal Joke Weapon: Knights who fist people to death with their bare hands. Fists are normally a Joke Item, but they have the fastest attack speed in the game and surprisingly good reach on the straight punch. Combine this with the Knight's high health and you have a whirlwind of fisting death. Fisting Men-At-Arms require a bit more practice to use, but are even more deadly due to their ability to dodge away from incoming attacks, then immediately jump forward and start pummeling their attacker.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Vanguard is relatively fast, has access to polearms with long reach, and have a charge attack capable of performing a One-Hit Kill.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: A few shields can be used in place of throwing weapons, ranging from humble Bucklers for the Men-At-Arms to gigantic Tower Shields for the Knights. They can block anything that isn't on fire, a siege weapon, or a boot. Crossbow Archers also have the option of using a Pavise Shield, which instead of being used as a traditional shield, can be planted in the ground in front of them, providing cover for them while they shoot and reload their crossbows.
  • Additionally, some shields provide some protection even if they are left strapped to the back of the carrier. In most cases, they'll block arrows, and other ranged attacks,
• Mêlée à Trois: Free-for-all. Everyone, going in head first screaming at the top of their lungs, probably dies once at some point. Probably Free-for-all's main appeal, especially for the hilarity at times over how they died. Also, it is common to get into a literal three-person combat, which each combatant wanting the other two to go kill each other for him.
• Military Coup: The Mason Order is trying to do this.
• Mook Chivalry: Thoroughly averted, considering that the players themselves are mooks, and ganging up on a heavily armoured and slow Knight is the best way to take them (and each other) down. Some caution is encouraged, as far too often such a fight ends with the ganger-ons scoring two or three kills.
• Mighty Glacier: Knights have some of the strongest weapons in the game, but they move very slowly and their weapons tend to combine a short reach with a slow swing.
• Mordor: In case you haven't figured it out yet, the Mason Order is evil enough to have their capital at the foot of a live volcano.
• No "Arc" in "Archery": Averted, ranged weapons do have drop-off. Having a bunch of ranged weapons that are literally point-and-click would make the Archer class completely overpowered.
• No Kill like Overkill: Nothing stops you from, after killing an enemy, hacking at his limbs and corpse like an Ax-Crazy Slasher Movie villain.
  • There's one sweet way to kill as a Vanguard: equip your throwing hatchets, throw both successfully at an enemy going your way. While the death animation goes on, go towards him, switch to your secondary weapon (knife or hatchet) and cut his throat with it, possibly decapitating the guy you just fatally wounded in his death throttles.
• Offing The Royal Family: One of the missions involves killing the sons, uncles, brothers, etc of the Agathan Queen.
  • Lady Looks Like a Dude: Based on the kill feeds, one of them is the Queen, though they all use the same male peasant model.
• Obviously Evil: The Mason Order, again.
  • And if that wasn't enough, the alternate Mason Archer helmet is very obviously Shredder's complete with a bandana mask.
• One-Hit Kill: Vanguard's charge, Knights with the Maul, Archers against people without helmets. Probably the only class without much potential for OHKOs is the Man-At-Arms.
  • The siege weapons embody this trope, for better or worse; and no, Your Shield Will Not Protect You from these. Catapult rocks put off impressive AOE explosions upon impact, sending any victims flying. And if a Ballista bolt hits you, you are dead, end of story.
• One-Hit Polykill: Weapons are capable of hitting multiple people, including your allies. There is an achievement for cutting off two heads with one swing. Ballistae and Catapults can also do this if properly aimed.
• Order Versus Chaos: The Order side being represented by the Agathans, who try to keep peace in the kingdom, versus the Chaotic Mason Order, who try to overthrow the monarchy.
• Ragdoll Physics: Whenever an enemy is killed, they turn into ragdolls that still react to damage. Cutting off the limbs of the other guys is common after an Elimination round.
• Rape, Pillage, and Burn: One of the game modes sees the Agatha knights defending against the Mason team. The first objective for the Masons is to burn down the village and slaughter all the Filthy Peasants.
• Rated M for Manly: Manly chivalric knights fighting manly war against manly Dirty Communists who also put the "evil" in medieval, shouting manly war cries at each other. Even the main menu theme will assuredly put hair on your chest:
  Mason Knight: "I TIRE OF MEAD! I THIRST... FOR BLOOOOOOOD! AGATHA IS FINISHED!!!"
  Agatha Knight: "SEND THEM TO JOIN THEIR FAMILIES... INNNN DEEEEEEEAAAAATHHHH! BEWARE, THE LION ROARRRSSSS!!"
• Red and Black and Evil All Over: The Masons dress up in red and black armor.
• Reflexive Response:
  • Abusing this is the purpose of the feint button. Someone raising their weapon/shield to parry/block nothing just leaves them open for a strike that they can't parry after getting forced to lower their weapon or be kicked and then staggered for an easy strike.
  • Players can also abuse this by placing their striking side farther away from enemies, delaying the time at which their swing will connect to hit after temporary parries.
• Regenerating Health: It takes a while to kick in, and any action other than walking will pause it. Even then, it's very slow.
• Salt the Earth: One map has the Masons dumping a wagon full of plagued corpses into an aquifer and subsequently, a river, to poison a town's water supply.
• Scenery Porn: The game really does look great, with lush foliage, well-defined character models, and nice-looking textures.
  • Scenery Gorn: Said lush foliage and scenic villages rather quickly become spotted in pools of blood and dismembered corpses about halfway through any standard game.
• Scratch Damage: Kicking/shield-bashing does up to 5 whole hit points of damage, killing everyone's 100 health after 20 hits.
• Shield Bash: When wielding a shield, this replaces the kick. When using a flail or heavy flail, thrusting will perform a shield strike, since obviously you can't really thrust with a flail, as will the overhead when armed with buckler and javelin.
• Shout-Out: All of the Mason Man-At-Arm's taunts, and about 1/4 of taunts altogether are Shakespeare quotes.
• Shown Their Work: For a game that's primarily a Multiplayer Deathmatches and Assault battles, the dev's have done a fairly good job incorporating how weapons deal what type of damage, and what each type of armor does.
  • On the weapon side, each weapon's damage type is classified as dealing either Sharp (Also known as "Swing"), Pierce, Blunt Damage, and in a few rare cases Generic (I.E. Fire), with some in combination, and some by how you swing the weapon, (example, thrusting with a sword does Piercing damage). Additionally, weapons have logical limits to how much damage they can do. Thrusting with the blunt top of a hand axe for example will do some blunt damage... just not much.
    • Additionally seen for Archer's arrows, Bodkin-headed arrows deal piercing damage, having less base damage than other arrows, but dealing more damage overall to Knights and Vanguards compared to the others. Broadhead arrows deal Sharp damage, making them effective versus Archers and Men at Arms.
  • On the Armor side, this is how the heavier classes absorb damage.
    • Archers wear padded gambesons primarily, which means they won't stop much of anything (indeed, they actually take more damage from all weapon types). However, because it does soften the blow somewhat, Blunt damage has a smaller bonus compared to the other types.
    • Men-At-Arms wear leather armor which has a flat 15% resistance to all three primary damage types. Not enough to make tanking viable but enough to make sure they stand a fair chance in battle should they take a hit or two.
    • Vanguards wear Chain and Splint mail, making them fairly resistant to all damage types, but their lowest resistance is to piercing damage to account for them being able to work their way through gaps or the rings.
    • Knights reinforce all the above, with plate armor, making them very resistant to the three primary damage types Reducing Slashing and Piercing Damage by at least half. However, they can't stop Blunt damage attacks as well, making hammer, flails, maces, and club-type weapons best suited for dealing with them.
• The Siege/Storming the Castle: One of the game modes plays as this, with the attackers having to push a battering ram, dump a cart of rotting bodies in the water supply, break trebuchets, and generally cause mayhem.
• Sniper Duel: Yes, even a game set 1000+ years in the past still has this in Archer form.
• The Social Darwinist: The Mason Order's general viewpoint.
• Spikes of Doom: Present in Arena. Normally harmless, but if you're pushed into them by an attack or (more often) kick, instant death.
• The Squad: The Squad in medieval times, although they barely have any in-universe relations, considering they're all random soldiers.
• Stone Wall: Knights with Tower Shields. All but unassailable, but they have to sacrifice range and offensive output by using a one-handed weapon.
• Stupid Evil: The Mason Order in the tutorial. Even if you choose to join them, the guy making the offer attacks you to "test your mettle," dying in the process. Later, two other Mason soldiers attack you for killing him, and three more attack you for killing them. Assuming the player character stuck with the Order after all that, that's a net loss of five soldiers for just one recruit.
  • Also note that this is BEFORE the civil war, when the King is still around. Meaning that you and they are killing each other in broad daylight, in the middle of the camp for what basically amounts to "Hurr Wea Masons We KEEL STUFF even if it's technically an ally." While it makes a certain amount of sense for the Order to sound out potential enemies and supporters and try and dispose of the former where possible well ahead of time, causing *highly visible* carnage and mayhem that can be easily traced back to Malric and his men would realistically have the plot of the entire game be derailed by the summary executions.
• Suffer the Slings: Archers have access to a sling. They take either pebbles or iron balls as ammo; pebbles mean infinite ammo, iron balls do more damage but are limited and reload a little slower. The sling is weak, but fires fast, and can be "charged" for greater damage by spinning it more before firing.
• Swiss-Army Weapon:
  • The Billhook is a present weapon for the Vanguard. Although it's identical to most of the polearms considering there's no cavalry for it to be used against in-game.
  • The Pole Axe for the Knight class, combining an axe-blade, a hammer end, and a spike for thrusting, giving impressive damage type flexibility.
  • The Polehammer is like the Pole Axe, only with a larger hammer head than axe blade. The two weapons are the only ones in the game capable of inflicting all three damage types — blunt, piercing, and slashing.
  • The Halberd, the literal Swiss-Army Weapon, is also present.
• Team Killer: It's easy enough as it is to accidentally kill a teammate without the people running around doing this purposefully on all game modes. If you're particularly unfortunate, a single misunderstanding may cascade into the entire team killing each other. Unless of course it's happening to the other team.
• There Can Be Only One: The Free For All game mode. Around 32 players or so armed to the teeth with big swords and polearms and crossbows and axes, and only one player can win. Hilarity Ensues.
• Unbreakable Weapons: All of them. As a result, the game allows you to block oversized mauls with a thin dagger harmlessly, because it'd just suck for archers to be practically helpless to such weapons.
• Unlockable Content: Each class has three primary weapons, and two or three secondary weapons available at the start. The rest are unlocked after kills are obtained using each. Kills are only counted on ranked servers.
• War Is Hell: Toyed with. Beautiful environments quickly devolve into bloodied and corpse-riddled no-man's-land after a couple of minutes of fighting.
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: The accents are well portrayed, although some of them veer into this trope on occasion.
• World of Ham: If your Chivalry: Medieval Warfare matches do not have copious amounts of raucous yelling and valiant war cries, then something is wrong.
• World of Pun: One of the more popular PvE dungeon crawlers gives lines to the skeleton enemies, who offer such lines as "WHAT DO YOU MEAN 'I'M NOT HUMERUS ENOUGH TO BE A COMEDIAN'????"
• You Will Not Evade Me: As the game is primarily Melee-based, the Dev Team have built in a counter to those who overly rely on try to run away from a fight. A player sprinting after an opposing player trying to run away will eventually gain a "Chase Mode" speed buff, so long as they keep the center target pip on their screen on that player. The buff eventually scales up enough to even allow a Knight to catch up even to a sprinting Man At Arms. The only way to prevent being inevitably overrun and having 3 feet of steel going through you, is to either A. Break Line of Sight some how, B. Turn and fight, or C Run to where one of your teammates (or another player in Free-For-All) are, and turn the tables on your pursuer.
• Your Head Asplode:
  • Any killing head-strike from a blunt weapon will cause an opponent's head to explode. This includes punches, Hatchet stabs, and kicks to the head. Ludicrous Gibs would be accurate.
• Zerg Rush: One of the standard tactics, considering 3/4 of the classes are Melee with very limited range options.

Examples of Tropes pertaining to the Deadliest Warrior expansion

• Annoying Arrows: Only Samurais carry bows, and with limited ammo. They do inflict some damage, but not enough for outright kills aside from headshots. The Knight also carries a crossbow, which is slightly stronger.
• Gratuitous Japanese: The Samurai in the Deadliest Warriors expansion pack occasionally lapses into this.
• Lightning Bruiser: The Vikings "Berserker Speed" class buff. Every attack they combo, regardless of hitting or not, speeds up their attack's speed. As they can also dual-wield weapons, it's very common for a Viking player to let every enemy in multi-team matches start fighting each other, before charging in swinging blades left and right.
• Throwing Your Sword Always Works: And your shield, and your hand axe, and occasionally spears. For the Vikings, this is their only real means of ranged attack and is pretty effective too against anyone not expecting to have someone throw their entire arsenal at them, or a fleeing foe.

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